A liquid crystal display device has advantages, such as low voltage, low power consumption, large display, high quality color, and the like. Currently the liquid crystal display device is widely applied in electronic equipment, such as a computer, an electronic notepad, a mobile phone, a video camera and a high definition television. The liquid crystal display device generally includes a liquid crystal display panel configured to display images and a circuit portion configured to provide signals to the liquid crystal display panel. The liquid crystal display panel generally includes a thin film transistor (TFT) array substrate, an upper substrate and a liquid crystal substance located between the array substrate and the upper substrate.
The liquid crystal display panel is different from a cathode ray tube display device or a plasma display device in that the liquid crystal display panel itself does not emit light, but achieves an objective of display by modulating external incident light. A liquid crystal display displays information by modulating contrast in reflection and transmission of incident light.
The liquid crystal display panel has a transmission mode and a reflection mode according to different sources of the external light. A transmission type liquid crystal display panel uses a light emitted from a backlight provided by the liquid crystal display device itself for displaying. Disadvantages of a transmission display mode are that a backlight source has to be in a normally on state, leading to large power consumption. In addition, images are influenced by the external light when the liquid crystal display device is used outdoors, causing the images to not be displayed clearly. However, unlike the transmission type liquid crystal display panel, a reflection type liquid crystal display panel displays an image by reflecting and modulating the external light. An advantage of the reflection display mode is that the power consumption is reduced significantly. But this reflection display mode still has disadvantages. For example, the external light has to be strong enough. Considering the two display modes described above, technicians develop a transflective liquid crystal display panel, in which there is a transmission function and a reflection function in the same pixel. Accordingly, the backlight passes through the transmission region in the transmission mode, and the external light passes through the reflection region in the reflection mode. Therefore the transflective liquid crystal display panel has significant advantages in aspects of readability outdoors and reduction in the power consumption.
A plurality of video signal lines (also known as data lines) and a plurality of scanning lines (also known as gate lines) intersect one another on the thin film transistor array substrate. A plurality of regions are defined by these video signal lines and scanning lines. A pixel is included in each region. Each pixel includes a pixel electrode and a switching element TFT configured to selectively supply video signals to the pixel electrode.
In the related art, on the thin film transistor array substrate of the transflective liquid crystal display panel, a reflection electrode generally surrounds a transmission electrode in each pixel. Therefore the reflection electrodes of adjacent pixels are adjacent. Moreover, since both of the reflection electrodes are formed by a same conductive layer, in order to avoid a short circuit between the two adjacent pixels, the reflection electrodes of the two pixels are generally spaced apart. However, such structure of the thin film transistor array substrate results in reduced area of the reflection region and the transmission region. The reduction of these regions results in a reduced utilization ratio (aperture ratio).
In view of this, a new array substrate and a new liquid crystal display panel including the array substrate is needed to solve the problem of low utilization ratio (aperture ratio) caused by the existing thin film transistor array substrate.